Bay Area tech giant dumps 13 buildings near Stanford in huge office deal

"The reverberations from the tech giant Broadcom's $69 billion acquisition of VMware in 2023 continue to ripple throughout the Bay Area. On Tuesday, real estate firm Newmark announced that it had closed Broadcom's sale of a 13-building, 1.1 million-square-foot office campus in Palo Alto 's Stanford Research Park - buildings that the semiconductor company gained with its purchase of VMware."

"Broadcom's purchase of VMware was one of the largest tech mergers in history, bringing together two Silicon Valley companies with many thousands of employees apiece. VMware sells software to corporate customers, while Broadcom develops a wide range of semiconductor tools - the company got so big, in part, through a long run of other acquisitions. The 2023 deal brought shock waves to VMware's workforce, a group that was famously slow to return to in-person work at the tail end of the coronavirus pandemic."

Broadcom sold a 13-building, 1.1 million-square-foot office campus in Palo Alto's Stanford Research Park to Harvest Properties and TPG Real Estate, with Newmark calling it the largest square-footage sale in the park's history. The buildings were acquired through Broadcom's $69 billion purchase of VMware in 2023. The acquisition combined two large Silicon Valley companies and followed a history of Broadcom growth through acquisitions. The deal triggered a 1,267-worker layoff round and a strict return-to-office mandate from Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, who also moved Broadcom's headquarters to a Palo Alto VMware office adjacent to the sold tract.

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